Eoghan Daltun 🌍
@IrishRainforest
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Author of bestselling + award-winning book 'An Irish Atlantic Rainforest'. 15 years living with 73 acres of wildland. #Rewilding (Also on Instagram + Bluesky)
Beara, West Cork, Ireland
Joined January 2017
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I'm beyond excited to announce that my second book, 'The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey', goes on sale this September.
A photographic exploration and celebration of rainforests from Beara to north Antrim, it'll take the reader to other, exquisite, dimensions. 🌍
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It was both a pleasure and an honour to restore Seamus Murphy's sublime piece 'Dreamline' in Cork Public Museum last week.
Murphy was, beyond any doubt, Ireland's most important sculptor of the 20th century.
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Bono is such a total fraud, acting the great rebel standing up for the underdog and "freedom".
But when it comes to the murder of 12,000 defenceless children by US bombs? Ethnic cleansing? Genocide?
Silence.
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What might ambitious, exciting and inspiring rewilding really look like in Ireland?
I found out in the Scottish Highlands last weekend, beyond all my imaginings.
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Uragh, an ancient rainforest by the shores of Lough Inchiquin, on the Kerry side of the Beara Peninsula.
This is probably as close as you'll get to primeval wildwood in Ireland, an extremely rare and precious thing (<0.25% of total land area).
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Yesterday near Glenflesk, Kerry: another roadside bank annihilated with herbicide. In contrast my own place, bursting with wildflowers, pollinators and other life.
We're in the midst of a global mass extinction event. Our relentless and suicidal war on nature has to stop.
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Reenadina wood in Killarney National Park. The largest remaining yew forest in Europe, it has existed for at least 3,000 years.
It's a unique and wondrous place, with ancient trees whose amazing shapes take the breath away...
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Five years ago, none of the trees in the foreground were there.
In five years (or much less), the canopy will have closed over and all this will be wild native forest.
Not a single thing was planted: preventing overgrazing is all it took.
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Out of 240 nations and states on Earth, Ireland is THIRTEENTH FROM THE BOTTOM for nature.
And it shouldn't be any surprise: our countryside is an endless expanse of virtually lifeless fields, sheep-shorn uplands + sitka deadzones.
It's *long* past time for change.
#Rewilding
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It simply beggars belief that a tweet like this can gain 2.4k likes, when its core message is 'I don't want to hear about the ongoing rapid annihilation of the natural world, or mass extinction, or the causes, I just want to see some nice footage that pretends everything is ok.'
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Yesterday I spent an hour or so just sitting on a rock with the dog for company, soaking in the sun, an Irish Atlantic Rainforest below, and all the flourishing life around.
Soul medicine.
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Yesterday evening I was having a quiet pint in a pub I'd never been to before in Adrigole, Beara.
A local farmer came over + told me he was reading my book, loving it, and planning on putting some of it into practice on his own farm.
Compliments don't get much better than that.
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After weeks of drought, all the local streams have dried up. But, as usual, NOT those flowing through the woods, albeit now just at a trickle.
Healthy natural forests act as huge sponges, absorbing vast amounts of water during times of plenty, and releasing it back out slowly.
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There are moments in the woods when it's all just so beautiful, so powerfully alive, so full of depth, that it's close to overwhelming.
My eyes brim up, my heart feels like bursting, & I'm deeply grateful to life.
How lucky we are to live on such an astonishingly lovely planet.
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A real forest isn't just trees, but 1,000s of wild species - plants, animals, fungi - that coevolved over aeons to function together cohesively. It is an *ecosystem*.
A monoculture plantation, by contrast, is just trees, virtually bereft of other life. It is NOT an ecosystem.
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A fantastic 919 copies of 'An Irish Atlantic Rainforest' sold in only the last week!!!
I'm just so delighted the message is getting out there: that's why I wrote the book.
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Imagine if farmers had the option of being paid to rewild their land, just as they are to produce a few lamb chops (for eg), allowing immensely rich natural habitats like rainforest to return.
Imagine if the land was actually helping to *reverse* ecological + climate breakdown.
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Six or seven years ago, I nailed a few lengths of timber together near the house as goalposts for my two sons.
Look at the lichen encrustation since then: most of the crossbar is thickly carpeted. Thanks to the clean Atlantic air.
🌎
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That Ireland is one of the most ecologically wrecked places on Earth.
Croagh Patrick yesterday
What does this scene say to you?
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Once, most of Ireland would have looked like this: a vast, tangled temperate rainforest wilderness, bursting at the seams with highly diverse life.
Now there's practically zilch left, and even that is mostly kept to a trashed ecological state.
It's *high* time that changed.
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Out of 240 nations on Earth, Ireland ranks a catastrophic 13th from the bottom in how nature is doing.
My piece in today's
@IrishTimes
on why our need for the Nature Restoration Law could not be greater, and any MEPs who vote it down will be betraying us all, including farmers.
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The wee cottage I spent 4 years building in Kilmainham, Dublin, using the same stones from the original 18th century structure, is now being dwarfed by an adjacent ginormous apartment complex.
It pains me to see this.🤦
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"50 years ago, high on the barren Dartmoor, the authorities built a high stone wall around a sluice gate to Meldon Reservoir. Built for safety, it kept people and sheep outside an area the size of football pitch. It's now a rich, lush cloud forest teeming with species."
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It's actually impossible to fully comprehend the losses nature has sustained due to human impacts.
But here's the thing: it doesn't have to be like this. We CAN start turning things around, and make the world bloom with life again.
There's even a name for it: rewilding.
This is what an elephant herd is supposed to look like. Tsavo, Kenya in 1976
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"Bono and The Edge pocket millions from deal with Israeli bank profiting from war crimes."
To all those attacking my post on Bono yesterday, please read this. I ask you: how much lower can a person go, than getting rich off ethnic cleansing?
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The ecological desert that is Ireland, compared to many parts of the Scottish Highlands, where centuries of the erasure of nature are now being reversed in landscape-scale rewilding.
We've a *lot* of catching up to do on this island.
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Walking in the woods, the presence everywhere of stone field boundary walls and other remains is a reminder that what is now a wild rainforest was once a farmed landscape.
Nobody planned or planted this forest; it came into being *spontaneously*, due to the absence of livestock.
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'Shifting baseline syndrome' explains how extreme ecological depletion is normalised in human society, each generation accepting ever less nature as perfectly fine.
The concept is equally valid on land as at sea.
🌍
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I'm blue in the face saying this.
A 2019 study found that tree-planting is 40-times less effective at carbon-removal as letting existing forests regenerate.
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The way
@tcddublin
have let the lawns at the front of the college go wild is just so brilliant.
It's a brave, in-your-face conversation starter, questioning deep-set, long-unchallenged ideas about land, and the need for constant human dominance and control.
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Last week in Scotland I saw first hand the **radical** effect beavers have on a river.
By building dams + felling trees, they had turned a fairly featureless straight channel into a complex, diverse weave of watery habitats, bursting with wildlife.
Ecosystem engineers is right.
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In Scotland, BrewDog aimed to create a "Lost Forest" on land they bought by planting 100,000s of trees, despite lots of natural regeneration.
Why? Because they got £690k in grants. The result? Most of the planted trees died.
It's a racket, pure + simple
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Until this deer fence went up less than 10 years ago, the land behind was no different from the foreground where the sheep are. There was no planting: all of the trees naturally self-seeded (1)
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Massive numbers of people have been contacting me of late, seeking advice on how to go about rewilding pieces of land all over Ireland.
It's SO hugely encouraging to see this: it feels there's an unstoppable wave building for change in how we relate to nature on this island.
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The 'Death Star of the Oceans' is a perfect name for the Margiris, the 2nd biggest factory fishing ship on the planet.
And *right now* it's hoovering up unimaginable quantities of life off the coast of West Cork.
How is this crime allowed?
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Rock, oak, ferns, mosses...
An Irish Atlantic rainforest.
🌍
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Natural ecosystems transfer over 13 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year (equal to more than one-third of global emissions from fossil fuels) to mycorrhizal fungi, locking it away underground.
Rewilding is climate action too.
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How many people stop to enjoy the view of this river cascading down off the Caha Mountains, not realising that it's a knackered landscape, where once stood an ancient rainforest?
Now there's only grass and a few invasive rhodos.
SO much missing, all for just a handful of sheep.
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I've just heard from my publisher
@HachetteIre
that online sales of 'An Irish Atlantic Rainforest' have jumped hugely following yesterday's
@guardian
piece.
So much so, that a sixth reprint has now been ordered. It's clear there is MASSIVE appetite out there for rewilding.
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An Irish Atlantic Rainforest after rain: a world of dripping green and rushing torrents.
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If they can do this in Scotland, there's no reason why we can't do the very same in Ireland.
All we need is the vision and determination to make it happen, and wild nature will come flooding back.
Carrifran 1999 and today 27th July 2022.
Landscape scale habitat restoration.
#RewildScotland
#RewildOurPlanet
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The more tangled and wild a forest habitat is, the more valuable it is to wildlife.
Just leave it be.
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So,
@LeoVaradkar
has just said Ireland *won't* be supporting South Africa's case against Israel for genocide, because it isn't justified.
An Israeli Professor of Holocaust studies, on the other hand, says what Israel is doing is 'textbook genocide'.
I know who I think is right.
Gaza is a 'textbook genocide'.
This is according to Raz Segal - an Israeli associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in the US.
Listen carefully to what he says.
It's based on facts, law and precedent - and it should terrify you.
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No.
Because ecological + social justice go hand in hand.
@IrishRainforest
Could you not keep a separate twitter account for your political views ? Keep the rewilding separate
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Wonderful news!! Ospreys breeding again in Ireland for the first time in 200 years.
Nature doesn't have to be constantly retreating, dying off. It can come back.
It's *our* choice which we want.
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The Charleville oak in Offaly is famous as one of the oldest and most magnificent trees in Ireland.
But during some recent time spent in its company, I was intrigued to learn something else about it...
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The power and beauty of a wild-grown Irish Atlantic rainforest oak.
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NASA satellites reveal restorative power of beavers.
Let that sink in: the positive effects are so enormous, satellites can detect them from space.
For **so** many of the problems we now face, nature is the solution.
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This old, self-seeded oak is likely heir to a genetic lineage specific to this area stretching back millennia, perhaps to the first trees to colonise after the end of the last Ice Age.
One of SO many reasons why natural regeneration should *always* be prioritised over planting.
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The Irish public are very clear that we want more forests, but of the REAL, natural, kind, not deadzone monocultures. It's also essential for nature and the climate.
But the government,
@coilltenews
, and investors are all determined to force more sitka on us. Why?
$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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If you're one of those who's been fooled into thinking climate breakdown just means more sunbathing on beaches and ice cream, you're in for a *very* rude shock.
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One of these is a genuine wildflower meadow, which came naturally. It's a rich mini-ecosystem.
The other is from a packet of 'wildflower mix'. It fits somewhere between the real thing and a plastic display.
Nature needs far more of the first, but none of the second.
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Ugh.
Nature Disneyfied, de-wilded, vandalised, stripped of its real, inherent, magic and mystery.
Why can't we just appreciate what tiny remnants of the wild survive for their own sake, rather than so often feeling the need to impose some human fantasy on them?
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This is how a severely overgrazed temperate rainforest compares to its healthy equivalent.
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This land was already virtually empty of life, incessantly stripped bare by sheep. But to make double sure of an ecological void, it has to be regularly torched too.
Just think: once it was all an immensely species-rich temperate rainforest ecosystem.
And could be again.
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Oldhead Wood in Co. Mayo is one of the very few places in Ireland where you can still see rainforest reach down to the ocean.
Once, many of our coasts would have looked something like this.
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Once you start looking, all around you'll see examples of rewilding not by design ... but neglect.
This piece of disused land in Sligo town, for eg, is just heaving with wildflowers, grasses, self-seeded trees, butterflies and birdsong.
Why can't we actually *choose* this?
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The EU has approved Ireland's new forestry programme, which aims to get 'forest' cover up from 11 to 18% by planting 8,000 hectares of trees/year, the vast bulk of which will be yet more non-native conifers.
A *disaster* for nature, climate + communities.
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After 12 days zig-zagging across Ireland for speaking events (Cork, Galway, Fenit, Dublin, Dingle, Achill), this was the sight that greeted me when I got back yesterday evening: a carpet of Atlantic rainforest bluebells.
Wonderful to be home.
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Ancient olive trees being bulldozed en masse by Israeli colonists on the West Bank to facilitate ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
If the people protest, they risk being shot dead by armed settlers or the army. Over 100 have been killed there in the last 2 weeks alone.
[1] By night, the settlers invade Palestinian villages, & by day, they encroach upon their lands. Yesterday, settlers cut down hundreds of trees – some of them hundreds of years old – on the lands of Far'ata, Immatin, Qusrah, Haris, Qaryut, Turmusaya, Jalud, & Sinjil.
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Climbing plants like honeysuckle have such power that they can force their host tree to grow into some amazing shapes, as with this young birch in the woods.
But they're not 'bad' for the tree, and especially not for the forest ecosystem: on the contrary, they're vital.
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Irish uplands are sheer moonscapes, with little more than rock, coarse grasses, and sheep.
This was once all hugely species-rich rainforest; take away the sheep and it would go back to that.
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So often, it's the really tiny stuff that takes your breath away in the woods.
🌎
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Who'd want to live surrounded by this wall of dark lifelessness?
Plantation forestry already smothers 10% of Ireland, and the government wants to massively increase that.
We need alternatives, that work for people, nature + climate. This does the very opposite, on ALL fronts.
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The Margiris, called the 'Death Star of the Oceans', drags nets 6 football pitches long, hoovering up vast quantities of marine wildlife and leaving empty seas in its wake.
Now it's working the coast off southwest Ireland with 6 other supertrawlers.
It's criminal ecocide.
The
#supertrawler
fleet has been massing to the south west of Ireland over the last week, including the notorious Margiris at 143 metres. There are currently seven vessels in the area with four more supertrawlers moving west through the channel potentially on course to join them.…
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In what alternate universe can these two polar opposites both be called 'forest'?
In Ireland, where it suits those profiting from ecological deadzones to have us disbelieve our own intelligence.
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Even though almost entirely emptied of diverse life, eerie upland wastes like this are hauntingly beautiful, in their own way.
But imagine what this would once have been like, and could be again, swathed in rich temperate rainforest.
Just remove the sheep, and it could return.
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Ireland sure is beautiful.
But just imagine a landscape once again part covered in native forest, and a tapestry of other wild nature-rich habitats, instead of the barren monocultures so dominant everywhere now.
Wouldn't it all be SO much more beautiful, in every way?
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Planting trees doesn't create an actual **ecosystem**, which is composed of 1,000s of coevolved, interconnected and interdependant species.
Natural expansion of existing old forests, on the other hand, does.
Why do official policy makers continue to ignore such basic realities?
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There's a common misconception in agricultural circles that rewilding equals 'land abandonment'.
It absolutely does not.
Let's look at why...
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Gorgeous photo of a pine marten taken by a friend the other day in his Leitrim garden. They really are such a beautiful species, and a key component of our native ecosystems.
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Left: Killarney National Park, Ireland's largest surviving native rainforest, in the supposed 'care' of the state.
Right: my place, which was in the very same condition as the first pic 11 years ago.
How is this excusable?
How much longer will the outrage of KNP be let drag on?
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Out of all 240 global nations and states, Ireland is 13th from the bottom in biodiversity intactness.
Why?
One reason stands out.
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Kenmare River (bay), with behind a snow-dusted Carrauntoohill, Ireland's highest mountain.
It's beautiful but, let's be honest, with no native forest or other natural vegetation, it looks like the Red Sea; ie desert.
The land is *crying out* for a return to ecological vitality.
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An Irish rainforest shrouded in mist. We're SO lucky to have these amazing, precious habitats.
It's time we started acting like it by
a) No longer trashing the few remaining fragments
b) Creating the conditions for those fragments to expand out naturally
Let's do this.
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An open doorway of sunlight streams through a hazel copse, like a portal between realms.
Best wishes to everyone for the New Year, especially all those fighting in their own myriad ways for planet Earth.
We are family.
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A boy hugs his small sister after they were pulled from the rubble in Gaza. These children are no different from yours or mine.
That the
@EUCouncil
has failed to follow humanitarian orgs in calling for an immediate ceasefire is simply shameful and unforgivable.
#CeasfireNOW
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Don't buy the industry + government hype. Monoculture tree plantations do NOT help against climate breakdown: they worsen it.
They spell death for nature + local communities too.
We need more REAL, not fake, forests.
🌎
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Irish temperate rainforest after a shower, beams of sunlight shafting through the still dripping canopy.
Everyone who lives on, or visits, the island of Ireland should be able to experience this without having to go far.
It's time our native rainforests were allowed return.
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*Great* news: Wistman's Wood, possibly the most iconic fragment of ancient rainforest in the UK, is set to double in size.
Most important, this will be done not by planting, but by excluding livestock, allowing the wild trees etc. to spread out naturally.
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Some of the wilder parts of Glendalough give a sense of how most of Ireland once was, and could be again.
A rainforest nation.
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To my mind, heaven already exists, right here on Earth, rather than in an afterlife.
But all faiths, religious or secular, must come together and stop the ongoing murder of this unique and precious Creation, our biosphere, regardless of how you believe it was created.
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This could be happening in cities and towns across Ireland.
Why do we continue to accept drab, soul-killing urban environments when they could so easily be made a million times more pleasant, for us *and* for nature?
Just keep the traffic out. 🌍
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I'm delighted to hear that 'An Irish Atlantic Rainforest' has entered the Irish hardback bestseller list at Number 3!!!
(And only barely pipped at the post for second place!)
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A lot of people on twitter reporting from the UK on a terrifying virtual disappearance of insects. And it accords perfectly with all the data.
Much more than flashing red lights, these should be deafening sirens, screaming ecological collapse.
Yet most people remain oblivious.
@IrishRainforest
There's has been a really big drop in numbers here this year. Seen very few. Don't know why.
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Come on, Ireland!!
Jordan joins Malaysia and Turkey in backing South Africa’s submission filed at the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Just imagine if every other nation followed suit.
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What will it take to create a radical shift away from seeing highly biodiverse habitats like wild scrub as a waste of land?
And towards perceiving them as they truly are: ecological gold, and vital buffers against the collapse of nature + climate we're witnessing in real time?
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Contrast what most of Ireland was once like to how it is now.
Out of 240 countries in the world, we're *13th from the bottom* in biodiversity intactness, and these two images go a long way to explaining why.
Radical land use change could NOT be more badly + urgently needed.
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To celebrate the publication of 'An Irish Atlantic Rainforest' today, here's a small taste of what the book seeks to describe.
But no words or pictures could ever come close to actually being in there.
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Costa Rica brought its rainforests back, hugely benefitting nature, climate, and society.
Ireland can, and should, too!
🌎
Costa Rica, once home to rampant logging, has now almost doubled the size of its rainforest. They turned it all around within a generation. It can be done.
Protect people and the planet.
#ActOnClimate
#biodiversity
#deforestation
#rewilding
#solutions
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So the Irish state spends €12 million buying land, designates it a national park, and then ...
Announces it will allow sheep to continue to graze away virtually all diverse life.
What a *total* farce.
Minister
@noonan_malcolm
tells
@AgrilandIreland
that farming will continue as before following the launch of Ireland’s newest national park and first marine park in west Kerry. The park has cost the State €12m to acquire.
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The very best sort of garden:
one created by wild nature.
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I mainly post nature, ecology, rainforest and other enviro stuff, but here's a taste of what I do for a living as a sculpture conservator.
This week I've been working on the 16th century McGrath table tomb in St Carthage's Cathedral, Lismore (Co. Waterford).
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Ireland has lost about 99% of its forest cover, with other natural habitats equally hammered.
Nowhere else on Earth is there such a dire need for rewilding.
NOW.
🌎
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I often get asked for advice by people looking to buy a piece of land (of any size, from half an acre or less on up), in order to rewild it - ie let nature back in.
Here's a thread with a few of the key points I'd make.
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I was given this claw hammer when I was 12, and it was already old then.
It has since done all I've ever asked of it: built 2 homes, fixed fences up a mountain in Atlantic gales, plus a 1,000 other tasks. And it's STILL going strong.
What a total contrast to our disposable age.
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A map of France showing core reservoirs of biodiversity in dark, and ecological corridors in lighter, green. An equivalent map of Ireland would be nearly all white.
There can't be many parts of the world more in need of massive rewilding than here.
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I've just been for a walk up to the 'first top' of the mountain commonage, and the heat of the sun is withering. Such a relief to get back down into the cool of the trees in my own place.
For a thousand reasons, we should be letting our native forests return naturally, bigtime.
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I remember well when this was just barren grass.
Now it's a thriving, highly species-rich, rainforest habitat, full of wildflowers, butterflies + birdsong.
No endless surveys, studies or reports were required, just preventing overgrazing is all. It really isn't rocket science.
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